[Marxism] US SWP and gay rights

[Philip Ferguson <philip.ferguson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LP:


T O'L:

> not long after this, George Novack spoke in Australia and claimed the
SWP had been the first American left group to take a strong stand on Gay
Liberation.


I guess he didn't mention that the most immediate response of the SWP to
the emergence of the gay liberation movement was to ban homosexual men
and women from the organisation.

This was an odd move for a *vanguard* organisation.  You would think
that a *vanguard* might be a wee bit ahead, rather than tail-ending the
prejudices capitalist society generates against the oppressed.  Imagine
if they had've responded to the Montgomery Bus Boycott by banning blacks
from joining the organisation!

The kind of tortured gyrations the SWP leadership went through, for at
least three or four years, on what should be a very basic and
on-controversial *democratic* question for *revolutionaries* would tend
to indicate that the organisation - or, more specifically, its
leadership - left a lot to be desired even in what nostalgic folk see as
its halcyon period.

And, by the way, it didn't end there.  As late as the early 1990s the
'Militant' was running articles criticising a New York schools
sex-education book which, horror of horrors, suggested that young people
might experiment a bit sexually, including with same-sex stuff.  These
moral hypocrites at the 'Militant' counterposed a "proletarian" morality
which emphasises, apparently, "responsibility" not "promiscuity".

Given the sexual shenanigans of the top cabal of the US-SWP over the
years this was another case of "do as I say, not as I do".

With this kind of Victorian morality and hypocrisy in all things sexual,
no wonder they have so few young members.  

Phil 




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